CLASSCLASSCLASS: PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE with Aretha Aoki

Cover Image:

Photo: Tatyana Tenenbaum

As part of New Museum R&D Season: CHOREOGRAPHY, CLASSCLASSCLASS has organized PRACTICEPRACTICEPRACTICE, a series of fifteen artist-led classes open to adult dancers and non-dancers from the general public. Admission to each class is $8 cash, payable directly to the instructor. Please plan to arrive on time and stay for the entirety of the class. See the individual class listings below for specific information on themes and content.

PRACTICEPRACTICEPRACTICE with Aretha Aoki: The dancer is a haunted house

“What I hear is the muttering phantom, the mouse gnawing at the door. The wind in the mind of the trees. Nothing mindful or coherent. From the muttering, I try to make coherence…”
—Noy Holland

“The title for this workshop is inspired by Luis Alberto Urrea’s ‘Tin House’ lecture, in which he implores writers to ‘let the ghosts come’ into their writing. We will invite the seen and unseen murmurings of past, present, and future to surface in spontaneous dancing, writing, sounding, and speaking. We will use our imaginations to extend the boundaries of the self into the unknown. We will explore the intersections and interactions between making, dancing, and witnessing. Bring something to write on and something to write with.”
—Aretha Aoki

Aretha Aoki is a dancer and choreographer from Vancouver, British Columbia. Her latest work, The Multiple, was performed at APE Gallery in Northampton, Massachusetts.

CLASSCLASSCLASS at the New Museum

Augmenting the last three weeks of their R&D Season residency (“P.O.L.E. [People, Objects, Language, Exchange]”), artist duo Gerard & Kelly have invited New York City–based CLASSCLASSCLASS to operate its program of process-based, affordable dance classes in the New Museum Theater. CCC has made a significant intervention into education in the fields of performance and dance and has structured a production model that relates to broader explorations of alternative ecologies for working and living.

This edition of CCC—“PRACTICEPRACTICE PRACTICE”—brings together a diverse group of dance practitioners who have all led their movement practice with CCC over the past six years. Looking to past, present, and future, “PRACTICEPRACTICE PRACTICE” is a platform that supports the ongoing learning of artists as teachers. In doing so, “PRACTICEPRACTICE PRACTICE” acknowledges and invites the necessity of collective sharing in the development of ideas.

Lunchtime discussions, held on weekdays from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m., provide a social space between morning and afternoon classes and are free and open to the public.

About CLASSCLASSCLASSCLASSCLASSCLASS is a blank slate for movement artists to experiment with their artistic practice in some form of student-teacher relationship. CCC values inclusivity as well as the willingness to investigate ideas without the pressures of creating a product; students, come as you are. Since 2009, CCC has operated as an artist-run, artist-initiated platform. CCC addresses the needs of emerging artists to develop their ideas in the form of pedagogy, as both an artistic and professional tool. CCC has also provided an opportunity for more established artists to teach “outside of the box” or experiment with new teaching formats. Organizers seek out spaces that include independent artist-run studios such as the Woods, Barn, and Brazil. CCC has also partnered with institutions including Movement Research, the Abrons Art Center, Brooklyn Art Exchange, Gibney Dance, and Arts@Renaissance (in collaboration with AUNTS), among others. CCC is organized by Lindsay Reuter and Tatyana Tenenbaum.

Sponsors

This program is made possible, in part, through the support of the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Additional support for artist residencies is made possible by Laurie Wolfert.

Generous endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund, and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs at the New Museum.